ACLA Seminar: Stories of Memory in the 21st Century (June 2022)
CFP: ACLA 2022
Stories of Memory in the 21st Century
Location:
National Taipei Normal University
Taipei, Taiwan
*Contingency plan:
It may be held online due to the ongoing
pandemic, and the board will make a final decision in January 2022.
Time: June 15-18, 2022
Abstract Submission Deadline:
October 31st, 2021
Contact: Mavis Tseng
Associate Professor,
Taipei Medical University
Memory remains a popular topic among contemporary literature, TV series, and movies (Memento, The Bourne Identity, Remainder, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Girl on the Train, Total Recall, The Sense of an Ending, Minority Report, The Woman in the Window, Homecoming, Yesterday, etc.) These stories of memory provide fresh and critical perspectives of how remembering is framed by forgetting (and vice versa), and manifest the capacity of the past to haunt the present and the future. In one way or another, these stories reveal the unsettling discrepancy between history and memory on both individual and collective levels, highlight the fluidity of memory, and reconsider our criteria for selection about what to remember and what to forget.
This seminar examines the complex relationship between memory and storytelling in contemporary literature, TV series, and movies. This seminar will focus on the following questions: What is the relationship between memory and fiction in the 21st century? How do storytelling, verbal representation, and technologies influence our memory? How do social media, A. I., and other digital technologies influence how we remember and forget? How do we develop our criteria for selection and make our own choices about what to remember and what to forget? How does memory function in the 21st century? What is the future of memory?
Potential topics include (but are not limited to):
theories of memory
memory and forgetting
memory illusion
nostalgia and anachronism
postmemory, rememory
trauma, melancholy, and other backward affects
memory in the digital age
collective memory/amnesia
sci-fi, A.I. and memory
posthuman subjectivity and memory
reenactment/repetition in memory
Please send a 300 word abstract and a short bio through the ACLA portal (http://www.acla.org/node/add/paper) by 31st October, 2021. Please select “Stories of Memory in the 21stCentury” in the Seminar drop box. If you have any questions about this seminar, please feel free to contact Dr. Mavis Tseng at mavistseng@tmu.edu.tw